Alek

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We built an app that uses AI to help people with speech disabilities talk faster with less effort by predicting how they might want to respond in a conversation.

Team Size:
2
Location:
New Zealand
Founders:
Daniel Kahu
Program(s):

The Problem

For people with speech disabilities, particularly adults who are fully cognitive, it can be frustrating how slow existing speech assistant devices or apps can be. It can take a lot of time and effort even for relatively simple conversations.

The Solution

Our proposed solution is an app (called Alek), which uses the latest advances in AI to help the user communicate faster. The key innovation is to take the context of the conversation the user is in (using speech to text, or information we have gathered about the user and their background), and us that context to suggest how the user can respond. Then, rather than needing to type out full responses, the user can simply choose the best match from the given options. The intention is that we will continue to grow and improve the context that we have about the user, allowing us to offer better and better suggestions.